How programmable is the house fan with an Ecobee? With a Nest I have it programmed to come on every night at 10pm for a few hours to drawn out some undesired noise outside. Can this be done with the Ecobee as well?
That's a clever use of a fan. If anything, I would guess that you could ask Alexa to play fan sounds - I know Google Home/Siri do. But otherwise, I don't know the answer to your question.
Not the same, and won’t adequately mask sound the way having the whole house fan running and blowing does, unfortunately.
Doesn't the Ecobee4 require internet to use? What happens if the internet connection goes down or electricity goes out?
If power goes out, it resumes your last settings from flash memory when power comes back on. It will continue working without internet access, even getting in touch with room sensors, but you'll lose things like weather, Alexa support and so on.
This is what I have, Thermostat Model ecobee3 Firmware Version 3.7.0.969 with one satellite.
Question to Tester, is there to be any benefit gained from upgrading to the latest ecobee hardware from my earlier model? It did work with HomeKit commands via Siri but no longer will, not sure if this is simply a software issue.
Also if so, am I correct to assume a model 4 could it just plug onto the existing ecobee base plate connections thus avoiding any installation as such. If so it's a 30 second job. Then just software setup with iPhone.
If you're upgrading from a 3 to a 4, there are some wiring changes you need to make, but not much:
Friend of mine got one talked me into it. We both have the 3, no issues. It's been a really good stat, so I don't agree with Vmarks at all.
I got mine on black friday 2016, installed about a month later. I logged into the web dashboard the other day and according to the savings calculator, it has paid for itself after about 15 months of use.
I wish one of these smart thermostat makers would reverse engineer Carrier's Infinity protocol. I see all these thermostats on the market and there's only one I can use, which has an outrageous price.
you can't use a regular stat at all? that's kinda outrageous.
You can disagree, but one dead unit and one half-dead unit, only able to activate via the web app, and customer support that didn't know what to do and stopped answering say different.
Wow, that's an amazingly ugly UI, and a very expensive thermostat.
I'm not really in the market for a new thermostat, fortunately. Mine has one function that it needs to do well - keep my house at 68 degrees year round. That's pretty much all I need out of it. It also tells me the outside temp if I look at it, and reminds me to change the filter, if I look at it, but those are just gravy.
In the two-and-a-half years I have had my Ecobee, it has performed FLAWLESSLY! Customer support has been phenomenal when needed!
I only heve one major gripe. Version 6 of their software on an iPad has had so many capabilities STRIPPED out of it. It is a MAJOR STEP BACKWARDS. It has been UNIVERSALLY PANNED by Ecobee users. Whoever at Ecobee decided to remove functionality from a perfectly functioning product should not be allowed to have any further ideas. Just check out the reviews of Version 6 on the App Store.
Shame on Ecobee for not being responsive in putting back what was already in their software!
My EcoBee3 was an abysmal failure, and support was almost non-responsive. The themostat activated with the web browser app, but the phone app refused to activate. Their activation scheme fails in new and interesting ways, and their best advice for sorting out the reason why their thermostat would display the homekit pairing code was for me to erase my homekit home setup in icloud (what? your product won't show the code, so I should erase everyone else's devices? Forget it.)
They're terrible. Good luck to anyone who buys an Ecobee. It may work at the beginning, but at some point, you're gonna need luck.
Agree 100%. The thermostat itself is fine; problem is the buggy piece of crap app. Going on two years and it just keeps getting worse.
If there was another HomeKit alternative I'd have thrown it in the trash long ago. Looking forward to the day that an alternative shows up.
In short if you are distrustful and are totally unwilling to share any personal information like address, environmental details in you home, how/when the thermostat is used and such then don't waste your money. You'll be far better served by a traditional controller, the Ecobee will be pretty much non-functional.
Comments
mine was installed this morning (professionally by an HVAC contractor) and I asked.
https://support.ecobee.com/hc/en-us/articles/115006261388-I-m-upgrading-from-ecobee3-to-ecobee4-what-wiring-changes-do-I-need-to-make-
Functionally speaking there's not much difference with the 4 apart from Alexa integration.
Agree 100%. The thermostat itself is fine; problem is the buggy piece of crap app. Going on two years and it just keeps getting worse.
If there was another HomeKit alternative I'd have thrown it in the trash long ago. Looking forward to the day that an alternative shows up.
Doesn't require internet or electricity.
In short if you are distrustful and are totally unwilling to share any personal information like address, environmental details in you home, how/when the thermostat is used and such then don't waste your money. You'll be far better served by a traditional controller, the Ecobee will be pretty much non-functional.